"When a soul is bought and the seller reneges on the deal, a messenger must be sent to ensure the contract is upheld. That messenger is The Harbinger. If you sell your soul to the devil to become the next great rock superstar and then decide its not for you...you just may hear the flapping wings of your own demise. The Harbinger is always near. "

- TMB's description of The Harbinger


The Harbinger was an original character design that was created by TMB as an entry for the Deadly Demons custom toy contest at Figure Realm back in June/July of 2007. TMB won the first place gold trophy with his diabolical masterpiece. The original figure stood about six inches tall and was constructed from a Marvel Legends Showdown Venom (body and legs), Marvel Ghost Rider movie Caretaker (head), and TMNT CG movie Vampire Succubor (arms/wings). Other than stating that they were glued-on additions, TMB did not specify the source of the horns and spikes.


I had a pretty tough time narrowing down the characters I was potentially interested in making for this contest, as there are so many great ones to choose from. After studying many photos and much deliberating (not to mention more than a little procrastination), I finally settled on three candidates: Jin Saotome's "Witch Engine", Mostly Harmless' "The Dastardly Dung Beetle", and TMB's "The Harbinger". I can't really say why (maybe the Devil made me do it?), but I decided to go with the demonic Harbinger over the other two (if I had the time/ambition, I would have liked to have done all three as separate entries). I don't think that I've tried making bat wings on a figure in this particular fashion before (fully integrated into the arm, with the elbow articulation breaking up the wing), so that was interesting and something I might employ again in the future, but, other than that, it was a fairly routine project. I started modeling this figure, from scratch, during the afternoon on the 13th (two days before deadline, like I said, I procrastinate), and finished painting the completed toy with acrylics the following afternoon. My version of The Harbinger stands 1.7 inches tall (with 5/16 of an inch of that height being the horns) and has a maximum wingspan of 3.9 inches. It has 19 points of articulation (neck, shoulders x 2, biceps x 2, elbows x 2, mid-torso, waist, hips x 2, knees x 4, ankles x 2, and feet x 2).